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Yeah, as I said in the other thread, it seems sane... a Khronos take on the Mantle API.

Interested to see the complete model; do we get separate command queues for graphics and compute? (based on the ImgTec blog this looks to be the case!) how does it deal with multiple gpu machine? what about upload/download control?

But on the face of it things look sane... which I still find confusing... Edited March 3, 2015 by phantom

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ES3.1 is just a target hardware level; AMD just don't have a driver for it is all and ES is used because Mobile.

AMD's hardware will support this, likely anything which can support GL3.3 (which is roughly where ES3.1 is) has the ability to support this API which means basically all hardware in the wild today on the desktop. (driver allowing.)

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AMD's hardware will support this, likely anything which can support GL3.3 (which is roughly where ES3.1 is) has the ability to support this API which means basically all hardware in the wild today on the desktop. (driver allowing.)

I can only hope. OpenGL 3.3 support in AMD hardware goes back to HD 2xxx series, but they stopped supporting newer extensions on that hardware after OpenGL 4.2, whereas nVidia stopped at 4.4. Thus why something really useful like ARB_direct_state_access is only available in OpenGL 4.5 hardware, or why something simple like ARB_vertex_attrib_binding works in a nVidia GeForce 8800 GT from 2007, but doesn't works on an ATI Radeon HD4870 from 2009.

I'm not seeing them supporting Vulkan on anything pre-HD5xxx, maybe they'll go as far as not supporting Vulkan on anything that is pre-GCN.

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If the driver support is there too, then D3D12 is dead in the water for me

Microsoft is not listed as supporter (they didn't support OGL for years now,right ?), and if vulkan will hold its promises and mantle is the preferred console API, why should someone want to use D3D12 ? To support Win10 games ? With microsoft history of loosing interest in projects (starting from DirectPlay/DirectSound over to several DirectX version up to XNA), who want to risk to use a version which might be unsupport in 1-2 years ?

Edited March 3, 2015 by Ashaman73

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Microsoft is not listed as supporter (they didn't support OGL for years now,right ?), and if vulkan will hold its promises and mantle is the preferred console API, why should someone want to use D3D12 ? To support Win10 games?

Mantle is not a console API, at the moment it only runs on Windows, with plans for Linux/Mac support.

Xbox360 uses D3D9x.

XboxOne uses D3D11x, but soon to be D3D12x.

Windows uses D3D9 for WinXP+, D3D11 for WinVista+ or D3D12 for Win10+... or OpenGL.

PS3 uses GCM.

PS4 uses GNM.

Linux/MacOS use OpenGL.

If you're a console dev writing a cross-generation console game, you'll by necessity be using D3D9x, D3D11x (soon D3D12x), GCM and GNM.

If you're a console dev writing a current-generation console game, you'll by necessity be using D3D11x (soon D3D12x) and GNM.

If porting to Windows, it will be easiest to port the D3D11x version to D3D11 (or soon, easiest will be to port the D3D12x version to D3D12).

Porting to GL2/GL3/GL4 is currently a nightmare, no reason to bother with that pain unless you really need Mac/Linux support.

Porting to Mantle is not too bad... it's similar to a mixture of D3D11 and GNM, kinda, sorta.

Porting to Vulkan/GLNext will be similar to porting to Mantle... but still much harder than porting your D3D12x Xbone version to Windows D3D12.

So for games where consoles are the lead SKU, I expect D3D12 will be very popular on the Windows ports simply due to development/maintenance costs.

Also, we'll have to see how well Vulkan's validation layer works out. Ideally, this will fix a lot of practical issues that have hurt GL adoption professionally in the past.

D3D has always had the advantage of MS being the sole author of the UMD layer, which acts as a validation bridge between the user code and the driver code, and almost completely protects the user from vendor-specific behaviors (also thanks to MS actually testing/certifying the vendor's driver implementations!)

With GL on the other hand, the user code communicates directly with the vendor's driver code, with no independent middle layer to offer any protection or implementation behavior guarantees.

Hopefully Vulkan solves this issue, but it's yet to be seen. Hopefully it's validation layer lets you easily identify non-compliant code and ensure you're doing everything according to how the spec says you should do it... and hopefully the "open source tests" are as good as MS's D3D driver tests, to keep the vendor's honest and reliable.

Edited March 3, 2015 by Hodgman

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But in order for this to take off there needs to be good drivers. Not sure if Apple will keep up-to-date drivers (past bad OpenGL support, Metal) and not sure how Microsoft will cooperate (DX12 still not available). So it's mostly up to the GPU manufacturers (NV, AMD, Intel, PowerVR) to maintain good drivers. From [0], it looks like there's still a lot of work to be done.

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The reason to prefer D3D has always been more robust drivers and better tools on an API that hits ~95% of the target market. That's it. Preference for one vendor or one platform comes nowhere into it, nor do any malicious backdoor shenanigans. The D3D driver model was simply a better driver model that, once the emotional aspect of the original API war burned out, became obvious to everyone that it allowed for this to happen. But that's also the hurdle that Vulkan now has to get over (and Khronos are making the right kind of noises about this, which is encouraging).

Right now Vulkan seems to have a head-start, and if we can get a spec, sample apps, some functional tools and reasonable drivers from all 3 desktop vendors by SIGGRAPH, it should eat D3D 12.

On the other hand if Khronos stall or if the vendors fail to deliver then D3D 12 will have a chance to jump back ahead.

Either way the next year is going to be interesting.

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The reason to prefer D3D has always been more robust drivers and better tools on an API that hits ~95% of the target market. That's it. Preference for one vendor or one platform comes nowhere into it, nor do any malicious backdoor shenanigans. The D3D driver model was simply a better driver model that, once the emotional aspect of the original API war burned out, became obvious to everyone that it allowed for this to happen. But that's also the hurdle that Vulkan now has to get over (and Khronos are making the right kind of noises about this, which is encouraging).

Right now Vulkan seems to have a head-start, and if we can get a spec, sample apps, some functional tools and reasonable drivers from all 3 desktop vendors by SIGGRAPH, it should eat D3D 12.

On the other hand if Khronos stall or if the vendors fail to deliver then D3D 12 will have a chance to jump back ahead.

Either way the next year is going to be interesting.

Robust tools are a huge winning point there. OpenGL could target 95% of the market as well, but the lack of decent vendor agnostic tools made it a real pain in the keister to use. Using an API where you can actually debug what is going on (PIX for example) is really important. Unfortunately, OpenGL never really had that capability and you were stuck with whatever tools the various GPU vendors provided. Which, frankly, all suck in their own unique ways.

Vulkan certainly looks interesting, but I also recall the LAST TIME we were promised something great OpenGL wise. You might remember how that ended. So at the moment I'm going to go with current mood: Pessimistic without further evidence.
Edited March 3, 2015 by Washu

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Why would MS have to do anything?
They don't support OpenGL, Mantle, OpenCL and CUDA and yet they all work just fine... this is no different.

Not on tablet/phone hardware they don't. Neither is there VS support, without wacky plugins from IHVs. Still, I don't know if I dare to dream that the new standards-attentive MS will actually boost Vulkan to first class support.

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Any idea how vulkan will be "deviding" the support for lots of different devices?
Meaning that you don't have a disadvantage when developing for current gen consoles/pc versus a gui for a washing machine.

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Why would MS have to do anything?
They don't support OpenGL, Mantle, OpenCL and CUDA and yet they all work just fine... this is no different.

I was trying to bring up the fact that some people believe that Microsoft sabotaged the OpenGL implementation on Windows to increase DirectX adoption. And whether Microsoft will allow Vulkan and Mantle to be first-class citizens with DX12 (if it's even possible) and whether Microsoft will keep their open-source friendly ways up (like Promit mentioned).

IIRC, Apple has to explicitly allow support for new APIs because they write their own drivers. So "it just works" isn't always possible.

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